


Stuck On You

by pinstripedJackalope



Category: Shadowhunters (TV), The Mortal Instruments Series - Cassandra Clare, The Shadowhunter Chronicles - All Media Types, The Shadowhunter Chronicles - Cassandra Clare
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Blood and Injury, Bond: Sticky Notes, Established Relationship, Hurt Alec Lightwood, Husbands, Injured Alec Lightwood, M/M, Major Character Injury, Post-it Notes, Soulmates, Whump, blink and you'll miss them, hints of malace
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-07
Updated: 2020-08-07
Packaged: 2021-03-06 06:48:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 7,713
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25739074
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pinstripedJackalope/pseuds/pinstripedJackalope
Summary: Magnus and Alec have an established soulbond, one that links them via magical sticky notes.  Who would have guessed that this soulbond would one day save Alec's life?  Though not, of course, without some trials and tribulations, first.
Relationships: Magnus Bane/Alec Lightwood
Comments: 25
Kudos: 266
Collections: Hunter's Moon Creation Exchange, Hunter's Moon Fic Recs





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sivan325](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sivan325/gifts).



> This is for the Hunter's Moon Discord Exchange! Hi Sivan325, hope you like it!
> 
> This is set in New York but presumably after most of the events of the show, as Magnus and Alec are married (though I'm still in season 1 of the show so really, what do I know).

Photo credit [here](https://the-ghost-of-william-herondale.tumblr.com/post/625761763769696256/stuck-on-you).

The fire message comes bright and early, zinging past Magnus’s ear and startling him awake. He stares at the smoldering paper for a long minute, blinking back the remnants of dreams. Something about hiking around underwater… he’s losing it even as he tries to grasp it. 

“Hnnn… smell smoke,” says a muffled voice next to him, one step away from dead-asleep and made up mostly of early morning phlegm. 

Right. The fire message. Magnus is not really expecting any news so it’s probably urgent. Some new something or other that has cropped up and requires his immediate attention, because of course it has and of course it does. Magnus pats Alec on the arm, letting him know that he’s got it and to go back to sleep. Then he frees one of his own arms from Alec’s bear-hug of a grip and snaps the paper up. He sighs as he unfolds it, scanning it quickly.

The message is short and to the point. Tessa, at the Spiral Labyrinth, with a highly volatile magical artifact that will require his expertise to disarm. He groans aloud, a noise that prompts Alec to curl up tighter around him, snuggling his face into Magnus’s shoulder blade. His stubble is itchy, and Magnus squirms a little at the tickle. Still mostly asleep, Alec says something in response that sounds even less like words than the last thing he said. His arm is so heavy, weighing Magnus down and dragging him back under. Just a few more minutes wouldn’t hurt…

The second fire message nearly singes Magnus’s hair. He grunts, fumbling for it. 

_Don_ _’t make me call Catarina,_ it says.

“Fiiine, you wiiin,” Magnus says back, and begins the work of extricating himself from his husband’s warm arms. He sits up on the edge of the bed, stretching and scrubbing at his face. When he turns back, Alec has settled into the warm spot he left behind, having rolled over from his own side of the bed to take over Magnus’s. It’s cute, despite the ungodly hour, and Magnus can’t help but press a kiss to the bare skin of Alec’s shoulder before he pulls the sheets up around it, tucking him in. 

Breakfast is easy, a simple bagel summoned from a shop in downtown. Magnus eats while snapping on different outfits, trying to pick one for the day. He’s not really feeling purple today—maybe teal? Ah, yes. Perfect.

With another quick snap, Magnus finishes up by putting on his usual eyeliner, examining it in the gaps between the gray sticky notes stuck on the mirror. Once he’s satisfied he pulls up his own stack of sticky notes—a pale lavender—and his favorite pink glitter pen and writes out a quick note. _Gone to the Labyrinth. Might be out of cell range._

He studies it for a moment. Something… is missing. He bites the inside of his cheek for a moment before adding a giant heart around the text. There. The simplest way to say _I Love You_. That really brings it together. Satisfied by the note, he pulls it from the stack and watches as it disappears into thin air, the soulbond at work. Alec will get it when he wakes up—in the meantime, it’s off to the Labyrinth for Magnus. 

He portals in a few minutes later. “Tessa, guess who!” he calls, disrupting the oppressive silence of the main room. A few heads turn, giving him looks, but he ignore them as his dear friend appears at the far end of the room, hurrying toward him. She has a smile on her face, so clearly the artifact, whatever it is, can’t have killed anyone yet.

“Come to the back hall with me, I’ll give you the lowdown,” Tessa says, linking her arm with his.

The lowdown is simple: the Labyrinth was recently visited by a very old and very _eccentric_ warlock from Iran. He came in, took tea with Tessa and a few of the other Labyrinth regulars, decided without provocation that they should be the recipients of a ‘very dear talisman’, and handed over an intricate little device that promptly began to smoke and emit a terrifying aura that caused a few of said regulars to collapse. When Tessa turned around to ask the elder warlock to take the… thing… back, she found that he’d promptly disappeared out the back way, leaving behind nothing but his teacup and a small silver coin from a long-lost culture. And, of course, the device. The device that Tessa then shoved into a pocket dimension in the back of the Labyrinth so that no one else would succumb to whatever was leaking from it before it could be disarmed properly.

Magnus shakes his head, following Tessa as she leads him to the pocket dimension. He’s heard tales of old Khan, though he’s never met the man himself. Alas, the years are not always kind to warlocks, especially those who have long since hit their first millennium. 

“Here,” Tessa says, gesturing toward an ornate iron door. Magnus nods, and is just about to head inside when Alec’s first sticky note of the day appears before him, a flash of sunshine yellow stuck to the door.

_At the institute. Miss you. -Alec_

A smile graces Magnus’s face as he pulls it off and slips it into his pocket. “Excuse me a moment,” he says, pulling out his sticky notes once again. He scrawls a quick _miss you too, will be out of range for a bit >:(_ and sends it off, then gestures Tessa ahead of him. She rolls her eyes but opens the door at his request, letting him in.

The artifact… it’s a strange little thing. Unbidden, thoughts of the late Henry Branwell come to Magnus’s mind—the man would have loved to see something like this. But alas, it’s been many a year since dear Henry was about. Magnus brushes away the memories and gets to work trying to reverse engineer the damn thing without A) breaking it, B) exploding it, or C) passing out.

It’s more difficult than he thinks it will be. “A challenge, hm?” he says, pacing around the artifact as it hangs in the air before him. The pocket dimension is odd, a null zone that has no real boundaries and seems to be lit from all around, and Magnus has plenty of room to pace. He’s not sure how fast time is moving—his watch and his phone both stopped working when the door closed—but he’s at it for what feels like an hour or two before the urge to bash his head against something rises within him.

They take a break then, frowning and bouncing theories back and forth on their way out the door. Magnus feels around for the doorknob, pushing the heavy iron door open and stepping out of the pocket dimension. As soon as his eyes alight on the hallway wall across the way, a handful of sticky notes appear, as if they were waiting—little updates on Alec’s day, one or two of them beginning to fade from red-text-on-yellow-paper to black-text-on-gray. 

“You send an awful lot of those,” Tessa says, taking care not to brush up against any of the notes on the wall as Magnus fires off three sticky notes in quick succession. Her lips are quirking up in a knowing smile.

“Can you blame me?” Magnus asks. As if she’s one to talk—she and Will used to send scraps of paper back and forth nonstop, always quoting books and poetry at one another. It was so sickeningly sweet that Magnus moved across the ocean. Unbeknown to him, across the ocean was where he’d find the man who made him want to quote sonnets, himself. Such is life.

He debates a moment before sending another. Alec responds a moment later, a yellow sticky note appearing on the wall. Magnus plucks it off, smiling down at it.

_Ugh, getting pulled into a mission. Will have to talk later. Still miss you. -Alec_

_Stay safe, my darling Alexander_ , Magnus scrawls, sending the note off quickly. Gods, choosing to create a soulbond with Alec was the best decision he ever made.


	2. Chapter 2

The day goes on from there, the clocks out in the halls turning over from morning to afternoon as Magnus bites his tongue between his teeth and works at the strange little device in the pocket dimension. He steps out for a break once or twice, waiting to see if Alec has any updates, but both times there is nothing there and he continues on, summoning up some food for the two warlocks and diving back in.

The last stretch with the artifact is the longest, nearing three hours of hard work. Magnus has narrowed his sights on the component that is causing the strange aura—it’s a shard of an enchanted gem, one that is calling out in anguish to its fellow shards, desperate to be whole once more. Or, at least, that’s the closest metaphor that Magnus can come up with to describe something that doesn’t have, you know, emotions. With sweat dripping down his brow, he gently pries the shard out, slipping it into a small nullification box that Tessa provides.

“I’ll put this in the back,” she says. Magnus collects the rest of the talisman and pockets it, intending to take another look at it later, in the safety of his own apothecary. He leaves the pocket dimension absentmindedly, holding the door open with his foot as he summons up his sticky notes and his pink glitter pen once more. He’s ready to go home—if Alec is done, too, then he can just sweep in and portal them both home for a nice dinner.

He sends it off with a flourish, smiling. Now, to see if Alec has sent any…

…ah…

…sticky notes.

Magnus stops dead, his jaw falling open. Beside him, Tessa gasps, one hand flying to her mouth. An understandable reaction, seeing as the moment, the _instant_ he looked up, the wall in front of him was _absolutely covered_ in little squares of paper, varying from charcoal gray to bright sunshine yellow.

It takes a moment for Magnus’s brain to kick back on. He’s never seen so many notes at once. He drifts forward, pulling out his phone as he goes. Alec isn’t generally liberal with his sticky notes—he’s a busy man, and a man of few words, so he usually sends one or two and then waits for Magnus to respond before sending more. The one exception was one time Alec was drunk and kept sending them from the club he was at with his siblings, and even then he only sent twenty or so. 

Magnus attempts a quick count. He gives up when he’s barely made a dent at fifteen. There must be hundreds on the wall in front of him. Something has _clearly_ gone wrong. Or, if not wrong, then clearly not _right_.

Magnus ignores Tessa’s frown as he calls up Alec’s phone, trailing his fingers over the notes. It goes straight to voicemail. He tries again, hitting the buttons almost absently. The closer he gets the clearer it becomes that most of the notes were scrawled off in a rush, red ink bleeding across the paper as if Alec broke his pen in his haste. Other than that the only pattern is that there IS no pattern to the massive sprawl. 

It’s unsettling, discomfiting in a way that Magnus can’t put his finger on. He narrows his focus, starting to take in individual messages just as the second call goes straight to voicemail. _Need you_ , says one. _How long does a disarmament take_ , says another. As he tries to read a third another sticky note appears on top of it, practically dripping in ink, nothing but a question mark scrawled on it. Only it isn’t ink, it’s too thick to be ink and the smell of it makes Magnus’s stomach turn because he knows the scent of blood and it never bodes well.

…Third call. Voicemail. 

This is wrong. This is very, _very_ wrong.

Suddenly viscerally afraid, Magnus snaps his fingers, magicking all the sticky notes into one pile, several inches thick. A quick attempt to track Alec using the sticky notes yields nothing much—there’s something interfering with the magic. Warding? Water? He doesn’t know.

Nearly growling in frustration, he brings up another contact, waiting as Jace’s phone rings. When that one, too, goes to voicemail he calls up Izzy, pinching the phone between his ear and his shoulder so he can pen another note.

_Where are you???_ he writes, sending it off as he bites his lip. He doesn’t realize that Tessa left to put the box away until she comes back, striding down the hall with a questioning look on her face.

“Have you figured out what’s going on?” she asks, stopping at his side. Magnus shakes his head, jittery, as he waits for Izzy to pick up.

It takes her a few long minutes, but she finally does, a whirl of activity suddenly flowing across the line. “ _Magnus_ —” she says, and if Magnus hadn’t already known something was wrong, god, that tone would have _gutted him_.

“Tell me everything,” he says, firm.

She does. About a call coming in detailing a rogue warlock using magic at the docks; how she, Alec, and Jace were pulled in to handle it; how when the warlock saw them getting close, she opened a portal right under their feet…

… and how the last thing Alec did was push Izzy onto solid ground before disappearing into the swirling void.

Magnus grits his teeth. “Rogue warlock. Do you have any information on her?”

“ _She_ _’s short, pale-skinned, with curly, light brown hair. I couldn’t see a warlock mark. The portal was green. Does that help_?”

Thinking hard, Magnus bites his lip. “…No. I don’t know any warlocks by that description. She’s either young and disconnected from the community or she’s from out of town,” he says. “And you have no idea where they were sent?”

“ _They_ _’re out of tracking range and your phone was out of range, too, and I’ve been trying to find them for hours but it’s like they just disappeared off the face of the_ freaking _earth_ —”

“Well, that’s not it,” Magnus says, cutting her off before she can build into hysterics. It takes a lot to rattle a shadowhunter—she must really be worried. “His sticky notes are still getting across, so wherever Alec is he’s still in this dimension, not in a pocket dimension.”

Izzy sucks in a gasp. “ _You_ _’re getting sticky notes? What do they say_?!”

Magnus looks at the thick stack in his hands. “I’ll… get back to you on that,” he says. “I just sent one asking where he is, still waiting for a response. I’ll need a few minutes to sort the ones I already have. The only thing I can tell you right now is that some of them have blood on them.”

He imagines her closing her eyes, her face pained, taking in the news that her brother is most likely hurt. Her voice, however, is steady when she speaks, saying, “ _Noted. Do your sorting. We_ _’ll keep working with what we have, but the moment you find anything—and I mean_ anything _, Magnus_ —”

“I will let you know,” he says, solemn. Then he hangs up, taking a deep breath.

It’s time to get to work.


	3. Chapter 3

When Magnus stands back, the wall is again covered in sticky notes and resembles something that a madman might have produced. A conspiracy board, maybe. Like the kind that people make when they’re tracking bigfoot or documenting alien sightings. The only difference is that Magnus isn’t looking for something that defies knowledge—he’s looking for his husband, and every clue he’s got comes straight from said husband’s hand.

He takes a moment to study the spread. He’s organized the notes vaguely from gray to yellow, oldest to newest. It’s hard to pinpoint which notes came exactly when and before which other notes, but he has the general timeline down. It takes three hours for a sticky note to gray out completely, and it looks like the oldest are just hitting that mark, so that gives them three hours worth of sticky notes to work with.

“Okay,” Magnus says to the group of warlocks who have gathered around him. “I’m looking for locations, status updates, and other details we could use to get either a location or a status update, in that order. I’ll start at the more recent notes, the rest of you spread out. And remember not to touch!”

Tessa nods her understanding, standing aside to organize a few younger warlocks who are staring in awe at the sheer number of sticky notes. Magnus, true to his word, skips right to the end, taking a deep breath as he goes.

Nothing new has come since the question mark that arrived a few minutes after Magnus left the pocket dimension. It’s hard, trying to keep himself calm despite knowing that something is preventing Alec from writing more notes. Has he succumbed to unconsciousness? Are the notes too bloody to write on? Magnus knows that Alec is still alive because his own notes are still going through, but the uncertainty regarding Alec’s condition digs into his chest like a knife.

Thankfully, after a few minutes of dedicated sleuthing the story begins to come clear. The warlocks tease it from the notes in bits and pieces, a _pinned under debris_ here and a _Jace still unconscious_ there. Apparently the rogue warlock transported the _parabatai_ to an abandoned, derelict building _somewhere_. It’s unclear whether she just wanted them out of the way or if she actually intended to catch them in the building’s collapse, but either way, down it came, trapping the two of them.

“ _Phone broken_ ,” Tessa reads off a sticky note from near the beginning, a frown on her face, as Magnus quickly texts this new information to Isabelle. “That explains the voicemail, but not why you can’t track them.”

Magnus hums, turning back to the wall. If only they had a _location_ , then this would all be so much _easier_ , and he could just _portal somewhere close_ to _get them_ —

A flash of yellow appears for the first time in a while, and Magnus immediately pounces on it. There are a few scribbles on the sticky note, the start of words scrawled and crossed out again like Alec couldn’t find the words he was looking for—and blood, more blood, so much blood.

_He_ _’s losing too much_ , Magnus thinks, with a lurch of his gut. Alec mentioned an Amissio at one point, so they know he’s been trying to deal with his injuries and slow the blood loss, but it’s been hours and Amissios can only do so much. Alec must be really feeling it at this point.

_Location, darling_ , Magnus writes on a new sticky note. That’s all they need, that’s it— _just one little location_. He scrubs a hand over his face, refocusing on the wall.

He doesn’t realize he’s been speaking aloud until a moment later, when there’s a triumphant call. “I’ve got your location!” says a warlock, one of the youngest there. He springs forward, toward the beginning of the timeline and the very first sticky notes that Alec sent off, and before Magnus can stop him he picks up the sticky note in question—

—only to gasp as it disintegrates in his fingers, turning to dust.

The warlock, Angus, freezes where he stands. Magnus takes a deep breath. In… and out… and then he sees someone move in his periphery, and before he knows it he’s snapped up a ward around the wall of sticky notes, his High Warlock voice booming out. “Okay, _everybody back off_!”

They go, all of them silent as they watch him. Magnus, for his part, just turns on Angus, bearing down on him and _demanding_ to know what the sticky note said.

Angus trills, his voice high as he says, “I don’t know! I just saw the word island and I—Lilith, I’m so _sorry_ —”

“Take a deep breath and try to think,” Tessa suggests.

Angus nods, taking a few deep breaths and scrunching his face up tight. It goes slack again a moment later, and he shakes his head, looking fearfully up at Magnus.

“Maybe,” Magnus grits out, sparks flying involuntarily from his fingertips, “we should reach inside your head and _pry_ the memory out.”

The young warlock squeaks, beginning to back away before Tessa catches him. “He’s joking!” she says, cutting a glare over at Magnus. “We won’t torture it out of you. Just… how about we go sit in a corner for a while and think on it, hm?”

Magnus prays for patience as Tessa leads Angus off toward the main room of the Labyrinth. An island… that’s something, at least. Magnus pivots on a heel, beginning to pace up and down the length of the note-covered wall, his mind working a mile a minute. An island would explain why tracking isn’t working—they must be separated by water. But which island? An island _where_?

Another sticky note appears, and Magnus snatches it up. _I saw it_ , it says, in wavering, unsteady writing. _Trying to remember._

Magnus swallows. He knows. He knows his husband, by _god_ does he know, and he _knows_ how hard Alec is probably trying right now. But his sticky notes are only getting bloodier and harder to understand, and the clock is ticking onward, and fuck—he’s running out of _time_.

What does he know? What information does he have?

One. The two parabatai were portalled off by a rogue warlock.

Two. They ended up in an abandoned, unstable building that then collapsed. It is on an island… somewhere.

Three. Alec is conscious. Bleeding, but conscious. Pinned.

Four. Jace is out. Unconscious, but not pinned. 

Five. Alec just sent another sticky note. It doesn’t even have words—it’s a scribble of red ink, lost to the blood. Magnus turns it this way and that, trying to make sense of it. He snaps a picture to send to Isabelle, guessing that Alec is trying to draw his location, but the meaning is lost on Magnus. This is the worst game of pictionary _ever_.

And then, in another flash of yellow, their salvation comes—a clear and concise note, not in Alec’s handwriting but in _Jace_ _’s_.

_In Manhattan. Alec NOT doing well. Debris too heavy—I need backup to get him out._

Magnus doesn’t have time to ponder the implications of Jace being able to utilize the soulbond. He’s too busy shouting “MANHATTAN!” at the top of his lungs, twirling around to give the nearest warlock a hug. He never thought he’d be happy to hear from Jace but here he is, nearly giddy with laughter—he’s so thankful he could _cry_.

Instead he sobers, letting go of the warlock and straightening his shirt. “You,” he says, pointing randomly to someone. “Update the Institute. And you—call Catarina Loss and get her to me. The rest of you buckle in— _we_ _’re going to Manhattan_.”


	4. Chapter 4

They get to Manhattan Island in minutes. Magnus heads through the portal first, holding it absently open as a dozen or so warlocks crowd out after him. His magic is singing in his veins, the unfinished location spell begging to be completed—he unfurls his fingers and lets it free, the magic flowing from him.

“This way,” he says, and sets off at a run.

It doesn’t take long to reach the building. Magnus recalls a story of a downworld haunt from the eighteen-hundreds, before he moved across the Atlantic—this place used to house warlocks, before the weight of the overlapping magic within it had compromised the foundations. It was glamoured and abandoned in 1853, in a permanent state of disrepair. Magnus had always meant to come investigate, to take it down if needed, but it was a delicate operation that he never quite had time for. The barest wisp of magic was rumored to be all that was needed to bring it down, after all.

He stared through the glamour of the construction site to the wreckage within. Who knew those rumors would turn out to be true? One rogue portal and crashing down it came. 

“This is the place?” calls a voice, and Magnus turns in time to see Catarina step out of a portal, tying her hair up in a bun, her mouth twisted with worry. She must have tracked his location after he tracked Alec’s.

Magnus nods, staring down the wreckage before him. Half of the walls are still standing, though barely. It’s going to require a lot of patience and delicate magic to get inside without disturbing the debris or bringing the rest of them down on top of the rescue team or the _parabatai_ pair that is somewhere inside.

…It’s a good thing Magnus has never backed down from a challenge. Especially one where his husband’s life is at stake.

“What do we need?” he asks, turning to Catarina.

She hums, already summoning up mundane paramedic supplies, a trauma kit slung over her shoulder and stretcher in her hands that she passes off to one of the other warlocks. “I’ve got everything,” she says.

“Good. Let’s go,” he says, unwilling to waste another moment outside when his husband needs him.

The entrance to the building is completely untraversable, the doorway folded down into nothing. Magnus instead finds a crack in the wall to slip into.

The moment he enters the remains of the building, the sunlight seems to dim, dust motes floating past in unnatural gloom. They’re in what must have been a large room—the floor above him has come mostly down, creating a slanted, tent-like effect, and great chunks of the floor are outright missing. Magnus pauses there, feeling in the air for traces of magic, looking for places where it’s volatile and doing his best to decompress it. When he’s done he gestures the rescue team forward, Catarina and Tessa flanking him and the rest coming up on their heels. He doesn’t dare use another location charm to get their exact location in the rubble—instead he summons up his sticky notes, jotting a quick _at the building, up or down_?

_Down_ , Jace says. _In the basement_.

Magnus hums in the unnatural stillness. As if in response the debris creaks, beams and concrete settling with a groan. He clutches at Catarina as the building seems to expand… and contract… and settle once again.

“Come on,” he says, after a long moment. “We need to find a way down.”

The search for functional stairs goes… not so well. They do find a staircase, out in a hallway that is canted freakishly to one side, but the wooden stairs are in splinters, torn asunder by the heavy barrage of the upper floors collapsing on top of them. Magnus peers down through the gaps in the wreckage, trying to see if there’s a path down, but alas he finds nothing useful. He retraces his steps, searching for another way… but still, there’s _nothing_.

Nothing except the holes in the floor of the first room they entered, anyway. 

“I guess this is our best bet,” Magnus says quietly, peering down into the darkness. He reaches a hand out to Catarina, and the other to Tessa, and then, swallowing heavily, he steps out into thin air and allows them to lower him down. 

It’s with a wince that he drops the last few feet, landing in a rather graceless crouch. He swallows, waiting to see if he’s disturbed the debris… but it holds, and he straightens up again, looking back up toward the hole above him. 

“Are we okay to come down?” Catarina asks. Magnus nods, raising his hands to catch her as she’s then lowered down after him.

Once Tessa and Catarina are both down, Magnus peers into the darkness. He’s hesitant to call out, but he doesn’t want to wander around blind down here, either—not when everything is so unstable, the skies above ready to fall at a moments notice. If only he could call up some light in the darkness he could—

The remnants of the basement light up. Magnus turns back, staring, to find that where Tessa once stood is now a warlock with bright, glowing skin—clearly someone she’s Changed into. She coughs pointedly, gesturing him and Catarina onward as she turns to help the rest of the rescue team down into the basement.

Magnus doesn’t waste another moment—he gathers Catarina’s hand and sets off.

The path around the debris is winding, and as they go they slowly begin to lose Tessa’s light. It doesn’t matter, though—not for long, anyway. Soon enough they begin to hear a voice in the darkness, speaking in a low, soothing tone. 

“Magnus is coming,” it says, drifting around a section of the ground floor that had collapsed entirely into the basement. “Magnus is coming and you’re going to be okay…”

Gods above, who ever thought Magnus would ever be so grateful to hear Jace’s voice? He has to hold himself back from sprinting towards it, and instead calls out in a low, careful voice, “Jace, Alec—we’re here.”

Jace pauses, his voice trailing off for a moment before he cheers softly in the darkness. “Thank the freaking angel,” he says. “Be careful—half the damn ceiling came down and I’m pretty sure the other half is ready to follow.”

Magnus swallows back his emotions, following the echoes of Jace’s voice. It’s coming from between two giant slabs of concrete—Magnus squeezes through the crack and comes out into a little bubble of light, sharp rays of sunlight coming down through cracks in the debris high above their heads and cutting like knives through the gloom. Beneath them sits a figure, crouched in a pool of witchlight beside a massive slab of the floor above.

It’s Jace, his face streaked with blood. And in front of him… in front of him…

Magnus swallows. Catarina goes to them immediately, kneeling down at Jace’s side, but Magnus hangs back just a moment. His heart is pounding as he gathers the courage to follow, stepping around the debris slow and steady, trying to ready himself for the sight.

He’s not ready. Not in the slightest. “Oh, Alexander…” he whispers.

Alec is flat on his stomach, the entire lower half of his body plus his left elbow swallowed up by huge chunks of what used to be the ceiling. He’s frighteningly pale, blood loss and cement dust combining with his alabaster skin to make him look downright ghoulish in the low light. The witchlight is pulsing off a puddle of blood that has seeped from some wound unknown—an abandoned stack of sticky notes is lying in it, lost to the thick, red liquid. 

He reacts, though barely, to Magnus’s voice. “M’nus?” he slurs, head turning slightly. There is a fresh rune—an Amissio, if Magnus isn’t mistaken, designed to slow loss and replenish blood—on his pinned arm.

Magnus swallows, hard, and finds himself kneeling down beside Catarina as she assesses what she can reach of Alec. Jace stares, eyes somewhat glazed, as Magnus reaches a shaking hand down to stroke Alec’s cheek, his neck, the shoulder that Magnus tucked under the blankets just this morning. “I’m here,” he says. He strokes Alec’s gray-dusted hair back from his face. 

“I’m here, I’m here, I’m here.”


	5. Chapter 5

Magnus has been sitting with Alec for somewhere between five minutes and an eternity when Catarina turns to him, her face grim.

“I can’t help him unless we get him out of here,” she says. “He needs a lot of healing work, and if I attempt it here I might bring the rest of the building down.”

Magnus nods. He doesn’t stir, except to stroke Alec’s hair back from his face.

“…That means we’re going to have to move him,” Catarina says gently.

Oh. Oh, _god_. Magnus’s gut lurches, as he looks around and realizes that the rest of the rescue team has taken up positions around the largest piece of the debris that is pinning Alec, getting ready to lift it off the mundane way. Jace has shifted to the side, holding the witchlight high so that Catarina can see.

“Where—where do you want me?” Magnus asks, his voice a rasp in the dimness. 

Catarina presses a hand to his shoulder quickly, a measure of support. “Stay right where you are. You job is to keep him as still as you can. This will probably hurt him.”

Magnus swallows, glancing past Catarina to Tessa, who is again herself. She smiles grimly. “You can do this,” she says. 

He can. He can do this. Magnus grits his teeth, kneeling down to Alec. 

“Sweetheart,” he says. “Are you with me?”

Alec hums, his eyes slipping open slowly. “Gonna move the sky?” he asks, voice slurring.

Magnus hums. “The debris, yes. I need you to stay still. Even if it hurts, you have to stay still. Do you understand?”

“…No moving,” Alec says.

Magnus nods. “No moving,” he agrees. Then, “Are you ready?”

Alec takes a shallow breath, and his free hand flexes, reaching slowly for Magnus. Magnus takes it before he can get too far, interlocking their fingers. “Ready,” Alec says, squeezing.

Magnus raises his head, and nods for the team to _do it_.

They do, moving as one. Muscles straining, legs bent, they band together and _heave_. The slab lifts, first one inch… then two… then three, and four, and Alec gasps in a full breath as the weight lifts free. Magnus grips his hand tight, pressing his other hand to the back of his neck to keep him steady as the gasp then turns to whines, his husband’s face scrunching in pain.

“Back!” Tessa grunts, and the team of warlocks move again, carrying the slab one step, and then two, moving it off of Alec an inch at a time. Catarina falls into its place, her hands fluttering over Alec’s body as she does some sort of mundane triage that Magnus doesn’t recognize. Alec is breathing fast and shallow, his eyes glassy as the warlocks finally reach a place where they can lower the slab back to the ground below.

Magnus strokes a hand through Alec’s hair, feeling the tension in his body. “How are you doing?” he asks.

“Hurts,” Alec gasps. His face is frighteningly pale, his fingers rubbery as he tries to grip Magnus’s hand.

“I know,” Magnus whispers, “but it’ll only be for a little while. Just until we can get you to the institute.”

Alec whines again, high and pained, but he doesn’t argue. He just grits his teeth, and allows Catarina to work.

She comes back to Magnus’s side a moment later, her latex gloves covered in blood. “There is a piece of rebar that’s pierced his abdomen,” she says. “That’s where the blood is coming from. We’ll have to lift him off in order to get him onto the stretcher.”

Magnus nods, stroking Alec’s hair back once again. “Okay. Okay. We can do that.”

“Good. Because you don’t have a choice,” Catarina says.

Oh, boy. 

Leaning down over Alec, Magnus opens his mouth to check in with him about the plan, and that more pain is to come. The words, however, won’t come out. Alec is already making high, pained whimpers and he can’t—he just—he _can_ _’t_. He can’t cause Alec more pain, _not like this_.

Taking a deep breath, Magnus raises a hand to Alec’s temple, quick sparks zapping along Alec’s skin. It’s a risk, using magic, but it’s worth it when a moment later Alec’s lips still, his eyes slipping closed and his grip going slack. Magnus pauses, listening for sounds of debris shifting above them—but none come. They’re in the clear.

It’s time to lift Alec off the rebar.

Magnus stations himself at Alec’s head, ready to hold his neck steady. The rest of the warlocks are all around Alec, hands and claws reaching forward to take hold of him, Catarina at his abdomen where the rebar has entered his body. “Slow and steady,” she says, her voice like steel. “We go slow and steady, starting… _now_!”

They go. At first Magnus thinks they’re not moving at all, but then… god. Then he _hears it_. First the sound of Alec’s bloody shirt unsticking from the floor, and then the sound of the rebar coming out, and it is the _worst thing he_ _’s ever heard in his life_. He tightens his grip on Alec just slightly as behind him Jace waivers with the witchlight, moaning softly in the background. Magnus doesn’t know what it must feel like—he doesn’t _want_ to know. He just wants it to be _over_ , oh _god_ —

And then it is, a small cheer going up through the warlocks as Catarina announces that they’re clear. They carefully step away from the rebar and the pool of blood, turning Alec onto his back and slowly setting him down on the waiting stretcher.

Catarina gets to work, applying bandages to the wound. Once she’s done she gestures one of the warlocks forward to hold pressure while she does some other mundane something or other to keep the pressure steady. She then moves to Alec’s head, slipping on a neck brace and strapping him into the stretcher. In minutes he’s secured, ready to be moved, and the warlocks again fall into formation, now with Alec and Jace among their ranks. 

They go back the way they came, carrying Alec between them, passing the stretcher through the cracks they had to duck through, all the way up until they come to the hole in the ceiling. It’s with determination etched into their faces that the warlocks work to lift Alec through, using ropes that Catarina produces from her bag, all the while moving further and further from the sticky notes lying, forgotten, in the puddle of blood.

But Magnus remembers. He remembers the sticky notes, remembers his husband’s cries. He watches all the while, trying to reconcile the amount of blood on Alec’s front, the amount that they’ve left behind on the floor, with the fact that his husband is still alive.

He’s still alive.

He’s still… lilith, _please don_ _’t let this be the last time Magnus sees his husband alive._ Please, _please_ let them get him out in time.


	6. Chapter 6

It takes a few minutes to get Alec and Jace far enough from the building to risk a portal, but the moment they’re through they’re met by Isabelle, who is waiting for them at the front of the Institute, pacing back and forth. She comes to a halt as soon as she sees them, her mouth dropping in an O as she takes in Jace, still on his feet but leaning heavily on Tessa, and Alec, unconscious in a stretcher with his entire front soaked through in red.

“That’s a lot of blood,” she breathes, hurrying to open the door for them. Magnus nods. He knows. God, does he know.

They’re at the infirmary moments later, the dust-covered warlocks lifting Alec into a bed for Catarina to get to work. Magnus follows, hands raised and at the ready as Jace is herded into the next bed over—when she orders him to sterilize the scene and clean the open wound he’s on it, magic rushing to his fingertips.

It’s delicate work, and requires enough of Magnus’s focus that he doesn’t notice the time ticking past, Catarina healing each of Alec’s broken bones meticulously one after another. By the time she reaches him and pushes his hands away he’s spent a good chunk of his magic on the small, fiddly work. It’s that plus the crash of adrenaline that leaves him unsteady. He steps back, allowing her access, and would have stumbled if not for Isabelle raising a hand to press to his back.

“You did good,” she says, quietly, so that only Magnus can hear, as she leads him to a chair. Magnus blinks. His hands are shaking—it doesn’t _feel_ like he did good. How long did it take him to realize something was wrong? How many of those goddamn sticky notes came through before he stepped out the door of the pocket dimension? If only he’d taken a break, if only he’d gotten to the sticky notes while Alec was still coherent, they could have spared Alec and Jace both so much _suffering_.

But he didn’t. He made his husband wait, all alone with an unconscious _parabatai_ , scrawling desperate sticky notes in the hopes that Magnus would just—fucking— _answer_. Three hours… god. 

Alec was pinned and in pain for three hours and Magnus _wasn_ _’t there_.

With shaking hands, Magnus summons his sticky notes and his pen. He ignores Izzy’s questioning sound as he uncaps the pen after three tries and puts the tip to the paper. There he falters—what can he possibly write that will make this better? _I_ _’m sorry_? An apology isn’t enough—sticky notes are _not enough_ to convey the _pure misery_ in his heart right now, the misery that he himself has caused.

He looks up to Alec once more, a tear falling from his eye. It’s blackened with his eyeliner, and lands on the sticky note. He muffles a sob into his hand and tries to rub it off, but the black only smears, leaving behind a streak of kohl on the lavender paper.

“I’m sorry,” he says aloud, his voice wavering. Izzy shushes him, her arm coming around his shoulders, but he can’t—he can’t—

He cries, the tears falling on his sticky notes like rain.

Fifteen minute later, he’s managed to calm himself to the occasional hiccup. It’s lucky that he has, because otherwise he might not have seen the fire message that arrives a moment later. He sighs, picking it up—the duties of the High Warlock never cease.

It’s important, because of course it is. He’d love to delegate this to another warlock and be done with it but alas, he needs to see this through.

Magnus swallows the guilt, pulling up his sticky notes once more and scribbling out an _I love you_. It’s the very least he can do. Alec deserves to know that he’s loved, that Magnus is thinking of him even now, even if he can’t be at his side. Catarina has healed him up except for a few superficial scrapes and bruises, and he’s still out cold, but the moment he wakes, the instant he opens his eyes, Magnus wants him to know that he’s loved. He pulls the sticky note from the stack and watches as it disappears. It will find its way. When Alec wakes, it will be there, waiting and ready.

Leaving Alec… it has never been harder. Still, Magnus manages, going off to take care of the sighting of the rogue warlock with the curly brown hair and the green portal magic.

It doesn’t take long to track her down. He was right in his assessment—young, alone, and disconnected from the community… what she’s done was an act of desperation. She didn’t mean to bring the building down. She stares at the wreckage of the structure and allows herself to be cuffed and taken to the downworld council to await trial, her eyes never leaving the debris.

Magnus sighs when it’s over, his fingers itching for his sticky notes. What’s done is done. She’ll be taken care of, and maybe in a few decades she’ll be able to come back and rejoin the warlock community as a productive member. They will reconcile. They will put this behind them. 

And Alec… Alec will be okay.

It’s at that moment that Magnus catches a flash of yellow, stuck to a wall before him. He pounces on it, anxiety _slamming_ into his gut—but it’s Alec’s handwriting, neat and utilitarian and beautiful. _I_ _’m awake_ , it says. _Come see me? -Alec_

To say that Magnus goes as fast as he can is an understatement. 

He is already on the move as he sends a flurry of sticky notes right back, pulling them off one after another with wild abandon. He gets through a portal and enters the Institute at a dead run, heading straight past the curtains that have been erected around Alec’s bed and all the sticky notes that are stuck to them, all the way until he can throw himself into his husband’s arms and hold him _tight tight tight_.

“Thank the heavens,” Magnus says, voice thick with unshed tears. “I was so convinced I’d lose you, you have no idea—”

“I’m okay,” Alec says back, holding just as tight. “I’m okay, thanks to you.”

Magnus barks a laugh. “You sent three hundred sticky notes before I realized anything was wrong, what do you mean ‘thanks to me’—”

Alec’s hand rises, cupping the back of Magnus’s head. “If you and I weren’t bound, I wouldn’t have had a chance. I had something to focus on instead of panicking. Magnus—I am so, so glad you and I are bound, you have _no idea_.”

Magnus laughs, a choked sound.

Alec holds him, humming. Then, his voice serious, he says, “I have something for you.”

Magnus swallows hard, still trying to breathe. “Do I have to move to get this something?”

“Only a little,” Alec says. Magnus holds on for a little moment longer, stroking a hand up Alec’s back, before he backs off.

Alec grins a lopsided grin. Then, to Magnus’s bafflement, he pulls out his sticky notes and begins to draw on one. He pulls it off the stack and sticks it oh, so carefully to Magnus’s forehead.

Magnus huffs a short laugh, a real one this time, reaching up to pluck it off. It’s just a heart, drawn in Alec’s neat hand. The simplest form of an _I Love You_. 

It’s with that note that he knows—they’re going to be okay.


End file.
